11 Blog-Killing Mistakes Newbie Mom Bloggers Make

Not because I’m picking on you, but because statistically, the majority of moms who blog make little to no income from their blogs month after month.

When you consider the fact that many moms start blogging with the purpose of bringing in more money to their household, that paints a pretty unfortunate picture.

If you’re a new mom blogger that’s struggling to grow your blog or turn a profit, I’ve got news for you: There’s a reason for it. Or more accurately, there are 11 reasons.

These 11 blog-killing mistakes are why most mom bloggers fail, and they surface again and again with the moms I work with who are trying to grow their blog.

Let’s call the out, one-by-one:

1. You Waste Time on Things That Don’t Matter

We’ve all done it. You sit down at your computer with the intention of getting productive work done, but instead, spend countless hours posting on social media (without a plan) and tweaking your blog design to make it “perfect”.

You’re doing things that you think you should do, or that other people have said you should do… but you know what you’re not doing?

One single thing to help your blog grow or make money. You need to make a blog plan and WORK THE PLAN every time you sit down to blog.

Pro Mom Blogger Insight: “Time is the most valuable resource we have. The key is to intentionally set time on your calendar, and dedicate this time specifically to your blog growth.”
– Ruth Soukup, EliteBlogAcademy.com

2. You Don’t Have a Real Work Schedule

There’s a notion among many moms that’s actually working against you: blogging “during naptime”.

After all, we’re busy moms with no extra time to dedicate to our blog, right? Let’s cram some work in while the kids are napping, or playing, or watching TV, or fill-in-the-blank. But that’s a slippery slope.

If you have a one or two babies who are on the same nap schedule and no other kids, then I can see how this might work. Heck, it used to work for me for a season after my first son was born.

But you know how frustrating it is when baby wakes up early from her nap and the boys come wailing to you to settle a fight and you haven’t even gotten a load of laundry in yet. You get frustrated with them for “interrupting” you and you get frustrated with yourself for getting frustrated with them. Frustration all around. And you didn’t even finish your blog post.

It’s crucial to set real working hours when you know you’ll be able to focus on blog tasks.

3. You Don’t Have a Blog Growth and Profit Plan

The ol’ Field of Dreams mantra, “If you build it, they will come”, is romantic and all, but it doesn’t work for blogging.

You can write epic post after epic post, but if you don’t have a solid plan to drive traffic to your blog, get email subscribers, and earn money, then your blog is going to be a ghost town with no readers, no comments and no profits.

Pro Mom Blogger Insight: “As much as I wish I could say I don’t need money from my blog, I do. In order for me to be able to provide free, quality content, the blog needs to be thriving; it’s got to make money.”
– Jordan Page, FunCheapOrFree.com

4. Ads Are Your Only Monetization Strategy

I get it. You don’t want to come off as pushy or slimy or “salesy”. Neither do I.

But throwing Google ads up in your sidebar with a hope and a prayer isn’t going to cut it. Without a solid strategy for creating profitable content that helps your audience, your blog won’t be making life-changing income anytime soon.

You don’t have to be a salesperson to run a profitable blog; in fact, most popular blogs don’t feel “salesy” at all. Think about it: do your favorite blogs feel like they’re always trying to sell you something? Probably not.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective ways to monetize your blog in the beginning, and there’s no slime factor involved (if you do it right!).

5. You Don’t Know Who You Want to Serve

You started your blog because you had something to say. A message to share. Knowledge to bestow.

But who are you blogging for? Who, specifically, does your content serve? Who do you want to be a hero to?

Without identifying your target audience, you’re trying to be all things to all people. And that means your content is going to feel impersonal and generic. Not helpful, not inspiring, and not profitable.

Pro Mom Blogger Insight: “Mommy bloggers cover a variety of topics from parenting to saving money to political issues. In order to establish a blog others want to read (readership is one of the goals of a blog), one must first decide the voice that will be used.”
– Holly Homer, KidsActivitiesBlog.com

6. You Don’t Know How to Create Powerful, Shareable Content

When you blog about you without framing it to benefit them (your audience), you’re missing the mark.

In addition, if you’re writing blog posts like you wrote your high school and college essays, you’re doing it wrong. You need to write for the internet, and that requires a whole different set of rules.

7. You’re Trying to Do It All (At Once)

You’re trying to master Pinterest, and Twitter, and Facebook, and Instagram and the million other things that pull you in competing directions.

But in the wise words of Sweet Brown, “Ain’t nobody got time for that”.

And I get it. You hear about how great “x” thing is for driving traffic or getting email sign ups so you go after it. Your intentions are in the right place, but spreading yourself too thin is going to give you mediocre (or worse) results at a lot of things.

You need to get focused. Remember: WORK THE PLAN (see #1 and #3).

8. You Haven’t Set Specific Goals

We’ve all heard advice about the power of goal-setting, so I won’t beat this point into the ground. But I will ask you this:

Is your blog getting as much traffic or making as much money as you set out for 1 year ago?

If you can’t answer with a definitive “yes” or “no”, that means you haven’t set specific goals for your blog. And that’s the surest way for it to fail.

Pro Mom Blogger Insight: “I’m a fanatic about setting goals. Why? Without them, you have nothing that you’re aiming for. Goals give you passion, purpose, motivation, and drive. You wake up each day with intention: you have a plan and you have direction.”
– Crystal Paine, MoneySavingMom.com

9. You Haven’t Defined Your Deep “Why”

Why are you blogging? If you said, “To make money”, or “To chronicle my journey” or something similarly generic, then you haven’t delved deep enough into your specific motivation for why you started blogging in the first place.

And this is vitally important to the life of your blog. When things get hard, when you feel like giving up, when you doubt yourself, it’s your WHY that will keep you going. Without it, you’ll give up.

Is it so you can stay home with your kids without stressing about money? Is it so you can have fun family vacations and adventures? Is it so you can quit your 9-5 that you hate and work on something you love? Is it so you stop feeling financial stress and pressure every time the car breaks down, guests come to town, or the kids need new clothes?

When things get hard, when you feel like giving up, when you doubt yourself, it’s your WHY that will keep you going. Without it, you’ll give up.

Take a few minutes to write out your “why” and post it up somewhere near your workstation so you can look at it every day. I’m serious. Make a pretty printable of it in Canva or simply write it out on a piece of paper. But do it.

Pro Mom Blogger Insight: “Blogging has literally changed my life. It has allowed me to stay home with my daughter, make thousands from the comfort of my own home, and work according to my own schedule.” – Gretchen Lindow, RetiredBy40Blog.com

10. You Refuse To Invest In Yourself and Your Business

Yep, I just called your blog a “business”. Scary? That’s okay… do it anyway!

A common mistake newbie bloggers make is that they refuse to spend any money on their blog until it starts making money. And I completely understand and empathize with that – I’ve been there. If you’re on a tight budget, investing in your blog can seem like a big leap of faith.

But the sooner you start to see your blog as a business, you can start investing strategically in things that will save you time and help you progress much faster.

I love this article by Mariah Coz of Femtrepreneur where she talks about that shift in mindset:

“When I first started blogging I was afraid of making monetary investments, such as using a paid blog, because I was anxious I wouldn’t be able to make any money and wouldn’t be able to cover those expenses. Over time I’ve come to realize how even tiny little micro-investments in your business can add up to a big return (in profit, sanity, and time saved). Making micro-investments in yourself and your business can be a major factor in success.“

11. You Take In Too Much Random Advice (and Don’t Take Strategic Action)

This one is perhaps the biggest and most detrimental mistake of them all.

The information available online for free today is staggering. Thanks to the internet, you can learn how to do, create, or become pretty much anything in the world you want to like never before in human history.

But that abundance of information has one very unfortunate side-effect: it can paralyze your progress if you stay in consumption mode and never take action.

Just as Mariah mentioned how micro-investments can catapult your blog to new levels, so can micro-actions. Commit to yourself that for every new worthwhile thing you learn, you will immediately take action on it beforetaking in any new information.

You should block out time in your blog work schedule specifically dedicated to learning/training (at least 1-2 hours a week) so it doesn’t infect your productivity time (like writing posts or working on money-making projects).

Then, follow this rhythm: Learn, implement, learn, implement, learn, implement.Make that pattern a habit. Just make sure you follow a strategic growth and profit plan when you blog, instead of acting on every random unrelated piece of advice out there.

The best comprehensive blogging plan I’ve seen is Elite Blog Academy, but it’s only open once a year so if you’re serious about taking your blog to legit business status then you should jump on the free waiting list now so you don’t miss the enrollment period.

Your Turn: Take Action

If you haven’t already started your blog, today’s your day! Now that you know the big newbie mistakes to avoid as you pursue your profitable blogging journey, you can start down the path to real growth and success. Then, be sure to follow a strategic blog growth and profit plan every.single.time you sit down to blog!

Have you made any of these newbie blogging mistakes? Are you still struggling with some? Let me know in the comments (hey, we’ve all been there)!

13 Comments

This is an excellent post for all bloggers, new and old. And I related to so many of these… Some made me feel good that I’m doing it right and others gave me a little poke in the rear and reminded me to get more organized and prioritize. Thank you for the excellent info! I’m pinning this now!

Love this post. For me I guess my fault is not having a real work schedule. I only work when my twins are “napping” or down for the night.

I’m looking forward to when they do go to school so I can actually set a schedule! How exciting is that? I can go to the gym in the morning, work on client work until lunch, write my blog posts until kids come home and then hang out and do supper! Love it 🙂

Ooh the gym… I miss the gym! Once my newest little guy grows up a bit I’m definitely working that back into the schedule 🙂

And I totally hear you with the naptime thing! That’s the biggest one that I need to keep myself in check with. For any productive work that requires focus, I make sure to only do it during the morning & evening hours. If I try to do any of that during the day it’s just not a happy house.

As blog-at-home-moms, we definitely need to find what works best for us. Thanks for dropping by Elna!

It’s not just mommy bloggers who are failing. Blogs are not really a business, and people who hope they’ll make a sustainable income from blogging alone are bound to be hugely disappointed. Over 90% of all blogs receive negligible traffic and a survey of bloggers found that over 80% have made less than $100 from their blogs. As a platform to showcase a business, they have potential of course, but building a brand through blogging can actually be a more time-consuming than running a profitable business without a blog!

While I agree that the majority of bloggers – moms and otherwise – are not profitable, I can’t agree with the statement that blogs are not a business (probably because for me, my blog IS my business & I make an income from home with my blog 😉

I think the big miss in the blogging world is that many people start blogs hoping to make money, however they don’t have a plan for HOW to do it, and spend way too much time chasing random tips and getting nowhere.

It’s important to set a solid foundation and have a blog monetization plan from the start. If you’d like some guidance on that end, just let me know & I’ll point you to some helpful articles and resources!

So true Meera! I’m working on another piece right now for HuffPost where I interviewed 10 different “mommy bloggers” who are just killing it with their blogs! Making a full-time income (many are making MUCH more), and it’s so inspiring to see women setting this example and inspiring other ambitious mamas 🙂

#2 is me all the way! And then if he wakes up early, I feel frustrated about that, and then I feel guilty for feeling frustrated. I’m trying to actually leave the house on the weekends when my husband is home and go sit at a coffee shop to work so that I have completely focused time. It’s helping!

I am glad I found this post. It has reinstated my faith in blogging. I could relate to every point discussed here- especially being short of time always and working in the kiddo’s napping hours. Sometimes it makes me feel heck, where I’m heading? Will it ever give some result? Now, I believe I’m on the right path, and everyone walks on the same road. Thanks for this post.

Glad to hear you’re not throwing in the towel! Blogging is definitely not for the faint of heart 😉 – Just make sure you plan your content ahead of time and that it always helps your readers solve a problem, reach a goal, or inspires them to action. Best wishes!